


Five Times House Had Regrets

by I_llbedammned



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Regret, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 13:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15268671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_llbedammned/pseuds/I_llbedammned
Summary: Though he would never admit it to the outside world, Gregory House has a handful of regrets.  He doesn't think about them during the day, but at night five of his regrets come back to him -all of the people he has let down over the years.  It takes place during Season 3 of House, to place it on the timeline.





	Five Times House Had Regrets

It started off with a simple question. For anyone else it would’ve simply stopped with the answer and they would’ve moved on with their lives. For Gregory House though, it turned into the latest obsession for his mind to dwell over. 

It was earlier in the day and some nurse, young with entirely too much make-up on, was staring at him after he had just argued with Cuddy. He explained to her that Cuddy was just jealous that he wasn’t paying enough attention to her. The nurse had responded, oddly enough ignoring the fact that House may or may not have slept with his boss, that he was a genius and that he probably never messed up. House has said something witty at the time, but now it seemed irrelevant.

House hadn’t been able to save everyone; he was a doctor after all. It was those people he couldn’t save that came to him now. It was easy enough to ignore them in the daylight while people and cases were around to distract him, but now it was night and all he had were his thoughts to keep him company.

5\. The first person came to his mind fairly simply. It was his latest failure. House hadn’t had many failures. He was careful, precise, and calculating constantly whenever a case struck his interest. This time, though, he had over calculated. The very thing which helped him to save other people had backfired this time and caused a death. But it wasn’t the fact that she was dead that bothered him, as a doctor he had to learn to deal with the fact that occasionally he would kill people, it was the fact that it was such a simple thing to die from. It wasn’t some obscure bacteria that made flesh melt or something equally obscure that could’ve been missed, it was a simple infection. 

If it had been more complicated, House could’ve just written it off and hoped that he could do better next time. Simple infections, though, was practically part of Medical School 101. It annoyed him that he could miss such a simple thing that any more linear thinking doctor would’ve caught. Something about the fact that he had failed where most people would’ve succeeded stuck unpleasantly in his mind and refused to leave it.

4\. He couldn’t even remember the next person’s name. She wasn’t all that important anyway; just some man’s wife who reacted badly to finding out her husband was cheating on her and decided to off herself. It was what her husband did because House could save her from herself that was the reason she was remembered. He shot House, to be blunt. That lost leg muscle would always be lost, a daily reminder that he had failed. Did he really need to have the additional pain of a new bullet wound to really hammer in the proof of his mortality? House couldn’t help but be a bit bitter towards his attacker because of that wound. After all, was it his fault that he had cheated on his wife? Was his fault she decided to end it all? No. Then why did he have to suffer for it?

3\. Wilson was his best friend, his only friend really- that’s what made failing him so hard. He could never admit it to anyone, but Wilson was special to him. Wilson had helped him out a few times, hell he even lied to the police for him. It was during the time that he lied to the police that House had failed him the greatest. He hadn’t been able to save him from having his life essentially torn apart. All he could do was go about his business and try to act like it didn’t bother him. It wasn’t just that Wilson’s life was falling apart though; it was that his life was falling apart because of him. His bank account wouldn’t have been frozen if it wasn’t for him. His practice wouldn’t be in jeopardy if it wasn’t for him. Hell there was even the sinking feeling that some of Wilson's marriages would have survived if it wasn't for his overly eager and needy best friend demanding all of his time. It had been a horribly frustrating time; he couldn’t even enjoy the case like he usually did because of guilt pain. Even the sense of vindication he had when Wilson went back on his lie couldn’t completely erase the memory of that helplessness and frustration from his mind late at night. 

 

2\. House had to start off as a resident, same as everyone else. It was his first case that he failed on. He couldn’t even remember the man’s name, just his face frozen in horror as a much younger House told him he was going to die. The prognosis: Echinococcus, in synch with Immune hemolytic anemia and an infection. It was a rare enough thing to happen, but that’s what made it stick in House’s head. Just because it was rare the other doctors hadn’t even considered it. It was part of the reason he had gone into such an obscure field, to prevent such a failure on his part again. Having a whole hospital of doctors, all of them thinking them the same exact way and hoping to find completely different diseases seemed a rather foolish way to run a hospital anyway.

1\. The last person was always the person House ended up on whenever he thought of his failures. He saw the person everyday and though he didn’t always like the person he annoyed him a good deal less than a good majority of the people House had to deal with everyday. It was himself. House couldn’t save himself from sabotaging all his relationships, romantic or otherwise, even if he didn’t want to do it. If they ever got close and they betrayed him, he didn’t want to think of what could happen. He couldn’t save himself from his drug addiction. Though it wasn’t a real problem, it would be nice to not be dependent upon a substance to live. There was just some infuriating part of him that had some sort of complex, that couldn’t seem to let himself be happy. He’d never admit to anyone else that he was the problem, hell he could barely admit it to himself, but he knew sooner or later he’d have to change something. He couldn’t keep letting himself down.


End file.
